TikTok will end its plan to expand its live e-commerce function. Tested in the United Kingdom for a year, it has not found its audience.
According to our colleagues from FinancialTimes, TikTok is abandoning its live e-commerce project in Europe and the United States. Its launch in the United Kingdom did not give enough guarantees.
For a year, this function had been tested across the Channel, the first market to be tackled by TikTok outside Asia. But she did not find her audience. This convinced the platform, which is also facing internal problems within the London office, not to expand the initiative elsewhere in the West.
The system, however, is simple: live-streamed videos in which brands and influencers sell products through a clickable shopping cart on the screen. However, “consumers know little about it”according to a TikTok employee.
TikTok planned to roll out its “digital home shopping” in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and even the United States later this year. Nothing will happen for the moment: the FinancialTimes explains that the social application will focus on the success of the project across the Channel.
Mayonnaise has therefore not yet caught on in the West, while this model is very successful in Asia. Indeed, live online shopping is real business for the owners of TikTok, ByteDance. In 2021, 10 billion products were sold on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok (which is also owned by ByteDance), three times more than in 2020.
However, e-commerce, moreover live, is considered the future of shopping on social networks, with platforms taking a commission on each sale. It remains to be seen how TikTok intends to catch up with its rivals YouTube and Instagram who are already trying it out, and for whom success seems to be at the rendezvous.